Friday, October 17, 2008

Are Retribution Paladins Overpowered?

Why are many people complaining that Retribution is overpowered? The answer is a little bit complicated, so I'm going to go bit by bit:

1. Ret paladins deal burst damage by design.

As I mentioned in this post, written a year and half ago in March 2007, Blizzard likes giving paladins a few strong abilities with long cooldowns. This means that you can line up all your cooldowns and deal a ton of damage in a short timespan. The downside is that you are then basically auto-attacking until your cooldowns come back up.

Second, burst damage is how Ret paladins are designed to kill people. Other than straight damage abilities, a Ret paladin only has 2 stuns with 60s cooldowns. Other than those two stuns, a paladin has no way to really control or put pressure on the other player. Paladins have no snares, no spell interrupts, no gap closing abilities like charge, no anti-healing debuffs like Mortal Strike, and most of all, no real ranged abilities. Hammer of Justice is the solution to all those problems. (When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.) A Ret paladin basically runs up to the other player, tries to stun, and hopes the sheer amount of damage kills them.

The paladin sees the 90% of the time they are without these long-cooldown skills, and considers them underpowered. The person who was on the receiving end the other 10% of the time is unhappy, and considers paladins overpowered.

2. Retribution is relatively simple to play.

You run up to someone, hit all your buttons, and hope they fall over dead. All the other classes are more complicated, and require a bit more time to get accustomed to. I don't think people have really gotten used to the new tools they have available. So it's no surprise that Retribution appeared the most powerful right out of the gate. All the other classes have a steeper learning curve.

3. Seal of Command is very swingy.

Seal of Command (or Seal of Casino, as paladins like to call it) is a powerful but random ability. It has about a 50% chance to proc if you are using a 3.6 spd weapon and the SoC glyph (1s internal cooldown). It does about 56% holy weapon damage, which we'll handwave and say is roughly equal to a weapon swing.

So let's say a Ret paladin runs up to someone and hits Judgement, Crusader Strike, and Divine Storm. She'll get off about 2 weapon swings as well. So that's a total of 5 swings in 4.5s. But SoC has a chance to proc off every ability. Taking the internal cooldown into account, there's a 30% chance SoC will proc 3 times (which is the maximum), giving 8 attacks in 4.5s, all of which can crit. That's very bursty.

4. Retribution damage talents are all front-loaded.

Pretty much all the damage talents for a Retribution spec are in the Ret tree, this means that they can all be taken at 70. The talent points from 70-80 will be spent on utility talents. A Ret talent plan for WotLK might look something like:

None of those are talents which directly increase active damage. They're all essentially utility talents. This is different from the other classes. Most other classes will get an increase in damage from the next 10 talent points, probably on the order of an extra 10%.

So a Ret paladin at 70 will have a greater proportion of damage talents than other classes, but they won't gain damage from the next 10 levels. So Ret is slightly ahead at 70, in order to ensure that everyone is level at 80.

Conclusion

So that's how I view Retribution at the moment. Retribution uses a few powerful abilities with longer cooldowns, and thus deals burst damage by design, apparently to compensate for its lack of control. All the other classes have a steeper learning curve. Seal of Command is very swingy. And Ret is able to max out the damage gained from talents much earlier than the other classes.

Is that overpowered? Maybe the talent issue at 70, but it will sort itself out by 80. I certainly don't think Ret is or was overpowered enough to warrant a hotfixed nerf. But I could be wrong. We need burst damage to function properly, but how much burst damage is too much? Half the challenge of playing a Ret paladin is actually getting to melee range. It's not like Retribution can Charge or Stealth or Death Grip. If a player lets a Ret paladin get in range, she has already lost half the battle.

Though you should take my opinion with a grain of salt. I'm not really a PvP player. I just want my class to: 1) feel like a paladin, not a warrior or priest; and 2) be viable in PvE raiding.

Edit: I do agree with people saying that Divine Shield (bubble) should be changed to -50% damage while it's up. It's currently -50% attack speed. Back in the old days, this was functionally equivalent to -50% damage because all we had was auto-attack + Seal. But now with our instant attacks, the attack speed reduction is a much lower penalty. Divine Shield is a defensive ability, and you shouldn't be able to use it to push through a burst kill without repercussion.

47 comments:

Yes Ret Pallies are OP ... like outside the box OP right now... I encountered in Hellfire a pvp flagged level 59 Ret doing the HF pvp quest. As a 62 SP I died in under the 4 seconds despite the fact my gear is absolutely the best you can get twinked out (including enchants)and my shield started the fight up. I then watched a 70 hunter almost die within about the same amount of time about 3 mins later after completing my corpse run. The only thing that stopped the hunter from dying was a few well placed heals and a shield. The bursting nature of those procs is basically BS.... even if it evens out over time ... a coin flip "I win" button isn't pvp its just a random death without any skill or actual fighting involved. Ret pallies should get to DPS as every other DPS spec but you basically have a situation now where pvp against ret is ridiculous ...

Excellent analysis! I was arguing with my brother some more on this topic. I should direct him to this post.

Most classes have a fair shot of taking out a Paladin. Mages can kite, especially frost. Hunters can kite. Prot Warriors are a PITA and they seem to have a lot stuns. Rogues can stunlock. Resto Shaman are impossible to get below 50% if they know what they are doing. Druids have several options. Priests don't seem to die. Warlocks can chain fear and do other nasty nasty stuff.

Do I think any of those classes are OP? No, not really. That is just how it is. If I get the drop on someone or I can stun them, I have a really good chance of winning. If not, there is a good chance the HoF and Cleanse will chew up all my GCDs and I will die before I get my damage in. And thats cool. Its give and take in PvP, and you cannot expect to be the one on the winning end all the time. That is foolish.

As long as PvE is good though, I am happy :P Did you see some of the goodies we are getting? Check out Zebra's blog for that.

One thing that I think you should have at least mentioned, though, is that much of their damage is Holy. You can't ignore that if you get hit by Holy damage, you can only hope that you have enough HP to soak it because your only options are to take or avoid. Very few effects reduce Holy damage (and that's only because they reduces all damage), and there's nothing to help resist it.

@RJ, I don't think it's much different from most magic damage. As a practical matter, almost all magic damage is unmitigated unless you wear specialized armor.

All that really changes is the size of the burst, in any case. It doesn't really change anything else.

@anonymous, maybe so, but then Blizzard would have to give us the tools (gap closer, interrupt, etc.) so we could actually DPS like any other spec.

Also, the anonymous post points out another issue. For many people, the fight starts when the Ret pally does her first swing. But in reality, the fight actually started when the Ret paladin was 30 yards away. The SP needed to keep away from the Ret paladin. Mind flay, psychic scream, DoT and run, Dispersion when you get stunned, etc.

I can somewhat see your point about the Holy damage. The reason I say somewhat is because we are not the only melee class that does magic damage of some kind. Shaman do as well with their Stormstrike, Maelstrom Weapon, Shocks, and the occaisional Lightning Bolt. Also, Rogues and Warriors can debuff your armor quite a bit, so more of their physical damage gets through. Rogues also have poisons that can be rather nasty, and those count as nature damage, which bypasses anything other then nature resistance. Also, this really only has validity in PvP. How much nature resist are you stack on your PvP gear to help with incoming Shaman and Rogue damage?

For that matter, how much resist gear are stacking to help with any school of magic?

Kite? Hand of Freedom, if someone wants to try to dispel it, it can take a while, at least long enough to get killed.Disarm? 50% reduced durationStunlock from Rogue? 30% reduced duration, so he can stun every 20s for 4s. Now compare with Improved Hammer of Justice.

Even if there are 2-3 people, they cant stop me from killing at least one of them (or two).

"The paladin sees the 90% of the time they are without these long-cooldown skills,..."

Yeah, you cant always bubble oO.

So even if i have to wait one minute for some of my cooldowns, i can kill every class with ease, then i have to wait a minute, but hey, they are dead. One heal, a drink, and again...

The main issue I think is that people won't listen. Blizzard has CLEARLY said that the balance would be off for lvl 70, only to get the balance back at lvl 80.

Also, it is true that the GCD is essentially our greatest foe during a fight. I've tested it, and if you immediately cast every spell you have (Judgment, Crusader Strike, Divine Storm, even Consecration) you're left with a few seconds auto-attacking. You can get an enemy's health down very quickly, but if you don't kill your foe with those initial spells, you're dead in the water for several seconds. And if your opponent is any good, those few seconds should be enough for your opponent to take over the fight.

You've really nailed what I feel are the problem with palas - burst damage, lack of combat control (special tricks - interupts etc.) and then just autoattacking until your cds are finished.

It's obvious that Blizzard still need to work on ret pala damage adjustments but retadins are in roughly the right place.

However, as you've said the gameplay, the easiness of the class is still in a really poor place - in fact I'd go as far to say that the pala in WoW is an extremely poor piece of class design and unfortunately it always has been.

When I compare the pala to a sophisticated class like the warrior say, it feels such a shame that still, Blizzard cannot seem to work out properly what the pala is for. And it's annoying that another class, the druid which was in a poor state in vanilla wow, is in a pretty place now and has been strong since TBC.

I'd always imagined the pala as a holy warrior i.e. with lots of strikes other than crusader. In fact a holy version of the death knight! But sadly faced with a new class i.e. the DK Blizzard seem to have given the DK all of it's most interesting caster melee ideas and given the pala the leftovers.

I love the pala archetype, I want to love my WoW pala but am always disappointed by Blizzard's vision for it.

Okay so, I played Ret at a high level, 2200+ in 3s, before it was "good".

Now it's a joke. Plain and simple. It's completely overpowered at 70.

I played about 100 2v2 games at around 2k-2.1k, and all you do is pop all your timers and attack someone. If they aren't a mage or a paladin, they die. If they are, you kill them when it drops. If you get attacked, shield and heal to full.

Every team I played above 2k had a Ret paladin. Some keyboard turned. Many did not know Freedom breaks stuns. Some would pop wings running at us (we were mounted and simply ran away) every single game.

It'll be interesting to see how the WoW Tourney in Montreal goes this weekend as I believe they are running the new 3.0 build. Will it be dominated by Ret Paladins, or will the usual suspects succeed in the 3v3 bracket?

While you're right, Rohan, the point is still that you -can- do things to mitigate that damage. A Paladin can toss up an elemental aura, a Shaman can toss down an elemental totem, a Hunter can put up his Nature aura, and other players can try to quickly put on resist gear.

I forgot to add what scares me the most about this. I kinda feel it means gear scaling is off for ret paladins. They will rock for t7 but suck after the first raid dungeons at 80 due to poor gear scaling. Moral is if you have a lv 70 paladin go ret and enjoy the OP while it lasts because it won't.

My earlier point has been proven, it seems. People clearly don't listen what's being said that Retribution has a lead at 70 (for the reasons Rohan described), but it all balances out at 80. Blizzard acknowledged this right from the start.

Tacklebeth: "Ret paladins needed a hotfix because of PvP."

PvP is pretty much all that seems to matter, it seems. It's a shame that raid viability has to suffer in order to keep the Paladin's opponents in PvP happy campers. Like Rohan said, the fight starts well before the Paladin is in melee range. As a ranged class, you have the ability to keep us out of melee range, and that should be your strategy. As a melee fighter, there's still ways to beat us. We're just as helpless when disarmed or stunlocked as the warriors and rogues who are stunned by a Paladin's Hammer of Justice.

I play a 70 ret paladin at the moment with, in my opinion, has good gear including S2, Blade of the Harbingers and other random epics i picked up from doing heroics and raids.

Lately, I've been doing battlegrounds and think that we are a bit overpowered considering with the right gear, our burst dps is enough to take most people out within a matter of seconds. Usually I can defeat mages/locks and other low armor wearers in about 4-5 hits.

Although, there have been some cases where other players knew how to play their class very well. For example: I dueled this mage numerous times and if he timed his pvp trinket and blink at the right times, he was able to kite me around and take me out before I could reach him.

I play a prot paladin for the most part (Nagmos on US Shadow Council) and a rogue (Svengoro, US shadow Council) Ret paladins are not overpowered. I have kited many to death with my rogue. A prot paladin is far more frightening.

I play for battlegrounds. I love battlegrounds. But as they stand, ret pallies are (quite literally) a game-breaker for me.

a Ret paladin only has 2 stuns with 60s cooldowns

In battlegrounds, 60 seconds is almost exactly how long it will take to rez, cast a buff, mount up, check the map, find where the action is, ride there, and join in. Just in time for another insta-gib.

I really don't care what the exact cooldowns are on the stuns, if the cooldowns are up every single time I see you.

People clearly don't listen what's being said that Retribution has a lead at 70 (for the reasons Rohan described), but it all balances out at 80. Blizzard acknowledged this right from the start.

Blizzard acknowledging the issue doesn't justify it. If they acknowledge it "right from the start", then they knew it was broken right from the start. For as long as there is a significant level 70 population, there is a huge problem, and one which I can honestly only ascribe to lazy design.

1) First we need to remeber that Blizzard has stated during the Warcrat III developement process they intentionally break things for the purposes of players using them, creating wide interest and eventually bringing them down. Crypt Fiends are a perfect example of this. Whether or not they do this in WoW I have no proof. Also Assuming this is a "Broken" problem.

2)People do not realise there is a new threat on the battlefeild on par with everyone else. Players that originally had no problems with Ret Paladins, mostly healers, are now in need or re-tooling their strategies. And may feel overwhelmed at first.

3) Finally, as with all major class overhauls, players are going to flock to those alts (geared or not) and start playing, so they will find signifigantly more of them.

GC has just suggested that Holy DPS is going to be looked at, noting that Pally healers got much less of a DPS increase than other healing specs.

The simplest way to address this would be to make SoR require 1-handed weapons, drop SoC to baseline lvl1 and place a significant SoR DPS boost deep in Holy (~Tier 8+) coupled with a decent +healing effect in the same talent (Holy Guidance seems like a good candidate).

On Topic, I'm still not convinced with decoupling Specials from damaging Seal Procs, but frankly if Burst can't get us over the finishing line in PvP then a more exotic solution as Rohan suggests, including many more abilities, may be required.

I really don't see how you think that you are going to be taken out by the same Paladin within 60 seconds just because that is the time it takes for their stuns to come off of cooldown. Swirling/flying hammers, wings, and pink name plates are just asking to be focus fired in a BG. That paladin will probably get killed seconds after killing you. Then he will have to do that same stuff, and most likely will stop and kill/get killed somewhere along the way to where you were.

It will probably be a few minutes before you see him a again if its AV.

With 3.0.2 WoW simply became a tad to quick. From my experience most Damagedealers got a DPS buff. Now the DDs are in a DPS range of 1200-1600DPS. If you compare this to the HP the average Level 70 Char has, you will see that most fights will be over after 10s.

Most players will have noticed how easy and quick they burn through instances and raid dungeons. And the same is happening in PvP. The DDs all got a huge buff. Mages, Warriors, Rogues, Moonkins can all wear down an opponent in a matter of seconds.

The only issue with the Ret is, before the patch 95% of the players did not see the Ret as a DD. And now he became one.

The major flaw in your argument is that Retribution Paladins are almost impossible to kite. With Blessing of Freedom, and Pursuit of Justice a ret pally is faster than I am and cannot be snared. On top of that are Hammer of Justice and Repentance, which both stun me so the Paladin can catch up.

Not all Paladins are capable of using those skills effectively, but if they are, kiting is not going to happen.

Ret pallys are ONLY over powered in comparison to Ret pallys prior to the patch. Paladins were the class that got the most changes in 3.0, and most of those changes were buffs.

Ret pallys really changed there game because a Retadin can now DPS(no joke dps), heal, and tank to an extent. I'm happy about this. I'm happy I can hit mobs and instant FOL the tank when needed so the healer can save his mana for when fight gets dirty. I'm also very happy my paladin is feared in PvP.

As far as big burst damage goes, They don't out do other classes. An MS warrior has the same thing going as a Retadin. Two instant attacks, one is AoE. Who cares if DS has a small heal, the heal is really really tiny.

While the bulk of the population is 70 ret needs the massive nerf hammer. When the population is mostly 80 it should go back up again in power. Or ideally Bliz would create talents more scalable with level and avoid this problem. They won’t.

Pallys have nothing to cry about right now. The crying can reasonably start at 80 in a couple months.

For all those in support of this new version of the Ret, I applaud you. It must be fun.

But please don't say it's deserving or "I'm also very happy my paladin is feared in PvP."

You are not feared, your class is feared. Because in the time one stun is over, the opponent is dead. What did you do? Nothing but what you always did. It was the patch. It was not you.

As for the blog, I argue that it is OP. It is to the point where there is no contest, no probability of success; no way to win against a Ret pally.

You say that it is just the use of cooldowns. They are 60 second cooldowns. Big whoop. If they were five minute copoldowns, I would agree. But 60 second cooldowns are up quickly. There is a slight pause between fights in PvP, and the "two" stuns are up again. So I fell that you are wrong, and justifying due to dedication to this one class.

And to the rogue who said that he easily kites paladins, I say false. What do you use, poison? Even with 30% to avoid dispelling your poisons, a paladin'ss cleanse spell is cheap. They can stun you from a distance. Your stuns are a shorter duration on him. And he can kill you in one stun.

There's a point many fail to realize. With the still-to-come Ret nerfs (looks like 2 more waves of them) Ret will be terrible for all but the leet players in PVP. And they will be back to sub-par in PVE when all is done. Sure, if you have Nintendo reflexes, Ret will still be awesome, but if you are a keyboard-turner, forget it.

Rets will be the new rogues. Deadly with a good player, terribad in the hands of the less skilled.

What really concerns me is the effect on PVE due to folks crying over PVP. THis happens over and over... (except the druids, Blizz refuses to nerf those...)

Thank God Prot pallys will stay viable. No one takes a Prot pally in PVP, so the QQers haven't realized that Prot got a lot better.

As a holy priest:I'd personally like to see a nerf to the BURST damage a ret pally can put out over 5 seconds. I'd rather see that and a buff to the damage that they can deal in 10 seconds. In PVP burst kills. In PVE DPS and time on target kills. It shouldnt be that hard for Blizz to push from one to the other without nerfing the spec to where it used to be.

The impossible to kite is just flat out false. I get kited like that's my only purpose in life. People like to complain that in mere seconds Ret Paladins can destroy an opponent. However, a Frost Nova means I am stuck in place. Burn up a a GCD using Freedom. No problem right? Wrong. Mage Spellsteals, now he has a glowing orange circles under his feet and I am starting to walk real slow again. PoJ has nothing on a snare, it is useful for two things: Running away from something like Boss AOE, or chasing down a running who you have debuffed with JoJ.

You are not going to run down a snare happy Mage just because you have PoJ. The Mage has Blink to get distance and time. The Mage has Spellsteal. The Mage also has instant cast nukes.

Examples can be made of any class that is generally capable of kiting or fearing. In fact I was reverse kited by Shadow Priest the other day. She used S:WP, VE, Fear, and Mind Flay. I was walking away from her very slowly while my life got drained off. Fear came down, I turned and ran and hit Cleanse on the way over there. It really didn't matter since she turned my brain into Jello with a Mind Blast. Down goes the Pally.

Why not bubble? Bubble was on cooldown. Why no trinket, it was down to from a chain fearing Warlock who also killed me like 30 seconds prior. Point is, we are not invincible. You just have to figure out what to do about the Paladin that is running at you. Once you have figured out a strategy, you will probably be as worried about a Paladin as you are a Warrior, Rogue, or Enhancement Shaman. We also tend to be very squishy outside of our Bubble and we don't have a lot of tricks like a Rogue or a Shaman. Shaman is probably the worst to deal with if they know what do with their totems and shocks.

In 2v2 perhaps, perhaps Ret are over the top at 70, but when has 2v2 ever been balanced? And indeed, where are all the nerf calls for Rogues, Mages and Boomkin Druids? Unfortunately this stinks of people who are used to facerolling to a win against Ret and now have to come up with some sort of a strategy for dealing with them (hint: Kite/CC works better now than it did before... Blown bubble = free kill).

If there is one thing the Tourney in Montreal showed this weekend it's that Ret is in no way uncounterable in the 'Balanced' bracket of 3v3. In fact in many ways Rogues and Mages, especially in tandem, are a whole lot more devastating than any combination of Ret in this bracket.

I'm sure that once everyone on Live hits 80 and gets a decent amount of PvP gear (and the 20k+ HP's, 750 resil that goes with it) and realises that 35%+ crit rates are a thing of the past they'll understand why calls for nerfs are premature.

The fundamental issue for many Paladins is that nerfs at the level cap tend to be overblown and remain in the game for a few patch cycles. It may be that you're happy with Ret being sidelined at 80 for 7 months, but I'm not enamoured with that idea.

want to get a bunch of hits on your blog? make the title of your post with the words "Ret Pally" and "OP".

Dradis is spot on with the kiting comment.Going after a decent frost mage makes me feel like a fat kid on a treadmill with a piece of cake on a stick, just out of my reach. only the chocolate cake is ice lancing me every 5 seconds. and if i finally get the cake it tastes like troll.I think that because most ret pally's have been easy kills for so long people have forgotten the critical weaknesses of the class. Like zebra said now they actually need /gasp a stragtegy. we still have weaknesses, are easily kitable, susceptible to spell damage, and are dependent on a small pool or mana. The burst and faster pace of pvp now forces other classes to think on their feet and execute a strategy quickly against a pally, or else they are holy toast.

I see both sides of the arguement and I can say each has their points. WoW is about to hotfix the paly in a few days reducing their damage I suppose. Nothing has been said but its mostly from all the "OP" ret palys. Here is the point bliz did say that ret palys were going to be above the game, here is their problem. You still have arena going on see battlegrounds dont matter getting recked in the world whatever. You die you spawn you live life. They should of had palys toned down intill the end of the arena season. They did know about this and should of made an attempt to fix that. Yes its still a burst but as everyone that runs arena knows that all your spells get reset at the end of each match thus you don't wait for cooldowns. Two palys 2 v 2 against most classes own. I as a mage can "kite" but after casting their spells and immunity im barly ahead of them. I can drop a ret paly but if they are on my im screwed. Just relize this for people that get pissed they changed spell pushback for this reason. At level 80 youll see a leveling out of classes. Arcane vs Frost or Fire mage Arcane usually wins. Hunters are all messed up from spell pushback not being there...that was their bread and butter relying on pushing back their preys spells to nothing. Got warriors reflecting spells now why? well Death Knight will be best DPS caster tank so they give warrior something to help out with casters. It all goes around if ur looking at headup match yeah palys mostly put a whomping on most classes. But it goes to say every class has their nitch u dont see me running up to Balinda with my staff out going rawr, you generally see casters in the back or trying to be sneaky with spells..you have hunters traping and distracting, rouges stealthing and being scared cause they cant show themselves when they get almost killed. You see it all the time its the role of the class and that what makes it fun.

Sum it up

Yes ret is OP a bit but will level out I feel yes bliz should of seen a problem in arena since everyone is making push for points before reset. And then applyied their full strength. When Wotlk comes out im sure you wish your ret paly had the dps it does now and can heal back up to full and do it all over again just to save you!!

I have rolled a ret pala (or indeed two) on pvp realms and I must say that with full CD they are very OP if you know how to play one. I was unbeatable in duels even took a deathknight at 56he was 58. So basically you will own in duels, I recall a good-geared skilled huntard who was 4 levels higher than me... he thought he would own me in a duel and challenged me. He knew his class I got ice trapped twice during the fight but with lay on hands I beat him :3 Now as stated a Pala with CD's burnt is not nearly as big a threat but basically in PVP servers where you will likely have full CD on every encounter you will always come out on top... I recall taking two deathknights at the same time in Nagrand good times =P They were 1 and 2 levels lower Lay on hands ftw. Anyway if you have a rough idea how to play a ret you will beat anyone one on one BUT in BG's where CD's won't be up most of the time things will be alot harder.

So my 80 DK was mounted and I was running somewhere and this 80 pally attacks me out of nowhere. Miraculously i manage to get away. Ten seconds later, he's on my ass again cause of his stupid Crusader's aura. He stuns me, then just hits and watches me die. Camped me there til i was sneaky enough to rez a ways behind him and hit death gate. then i laughed at him and he starting running at me but i beat him with the port.and people were saying DKS were friggen OP. i'm just pissed i cant even escape a damn pally. Idc that they could kill me if i tried to fight. It's BS that once it sees you, you're screwed whether you're standing there or mounted and running.

Yes Ret pallies are OP... Don't forget about their BS bubble. Look at me..I'm an OP pally and im gonna bubble and stun you then divine storm you while im immune to all your moves...that is so BS...and Blizzard keeps helping out the pallies..i don't remember what patch, but it increase the damg of divine storm..are you serious helping them out some more :(

you know when we bubble annon we do 50% less damage, playing against a skilled player's it's at minimum a dair fight with paladins i ahve been in BG's and stun locked by rogues taken out in seconds! if people know how to work in small teams, even on there own in a BG it's easy to take out a ret pala. it's bad enough our only instant ragend attack had ben nerfed to no longer even effect players pets! i know were melee and get the run increase but even warriors get the choice of ranged attacks.

I've played a Warlock since before Burning Crusade. About a week until it was released. And I have to say that it's a sad thing when a Warlock has an easier time with Rogues than a Paladin.

Paladins now are seriously OP. Speaking purely in a PvP sense,I fail to see the balance in a class that's all about stun, SotC, and spam divine storm while their completely immune to eveything else. And as if that wasn't bad enough, it even heals them. Sure they do 50% less damage while bubbled, but with melee hits, SotC, Divine Storm and Consecration going for them, where's the downside here? And let's think about the many bubbles they have.

First of all... you people need to READ what the op talked about. ALL RET HAS IS BURST...

There is not a healer in this game that a ret can kill...even today I had a holy priest ATTACK ME...why, because he knew there was not a damn thing I could do to shut down his easy mode healing. Any REAL pvp priest will tell you, they see a warrior, rogue, DK, hunter, shaman, hell anyone they worry about their healing being shut down...not so with ret.

ALSO for all you that think ret has more burst....even after the million nerfs we have taken since wrath...look at warrior or DK burst. I can tell you on the receiving end I'd rather face a ret vs a warrior or a DK.

I am just so so so sick of uneducated people QQing about ret..but you have a bubble...waaaaa...

man, priests have bubbles, DK have bubbles, rogues have bubbles, mages have bubbles...the only difference with a pallies is that his is 12 seconds on a 5 minute CD...all the rest can be done damn near all day long. It all has to do with damage mitigaion.

As for the lock QQing...use your succy...dot fear STILL works...

while I am on that topic..you have to love the lock tears when they QQ about rogues..

well lock, let me inform you..chain fearing and deathcoil is the EXACT SAME THING A ROGUE DOES..and that is BOTH people on the receiving end cant control their toon while they watch themselves die.

Right..I play an 80 rogue, decently geared on alliance. Human, so i have EMFHS, so no need for a trinket (in fact, trinkets share the same cooldown, so they are useless). I admit, i can beat nearly anything, stunlock is ftw on hunters, mages, locks, sometimes even the occasional warrior. But when it comes to ret paladins, im screwed. Letting ret paladins do that much damage in 5 seconds, with a 6 second stun, doesnt make sense to me. Add their armor, health, ability to heal, bubble, instant heal, its rediculous trying to beat them.

I have no problem with them being decent DD now, but this is stupid. Too often I've seen a ret paladin at the top of a BG score chart, with a score like 30 kills and 0 deaths, 40 kills and 1-2 deaths, etc. I rarely see warlocks or rogues with that type of score.

Sure, let them have the heals, bubbles, and LoH that they've always had, but if your going to let them heal, dont give them as much damage as a full geared warrior or dk.

As for the last post..people that complain about ret paladins aren't uneducated, if anything it seems like your post is just trying to put down anyone who doesnt like ret, just because you play one. Hell, like i said i play a rogue, and i would love to see mutilate assassination nerfed, its not nearly as fun as subtlety or combat, but it is by far the best spec for pvp. If blizzard paid attention to pvp in this game, which they clearly dont much (if at all), they would realize that pallys need to be brought back down to the point where they cant drop you on contact. Oh, and the tools everyone is talking about like charge, pallys get Redemption, which gives them the time to catch up to whoever they are fighting. And dont say trinket out of it, because then the pally pops HoJ and your still dead >.<

Dont mind the pallys dammage, bu then again.. i am a prot warrior =/ but really what gets to me is that bubble, that make then completly invincible... uhm, is that a joke? lookat me im a pally and i can rush into a group of 200 players and they wont be able to kill me hahahahahahaha. i think its a joke.... what about cap the flag on warsong gulch when that f'er goes invincible and caps. whoo! lets not forget that if you get close to killing a pally your fantisising, becouse hes gona use lay on hands. FULL HP!!!! lookit me i can heal faster than a resto druid.. in an instant, full heal. im uneducated becouse i know that pallys can sit back and use devine sheild, hand of freedom, that other sheild, and the mega armour move. ( forgot the name of it) hot dang, i wish a preist could do that ! lol.. pallys are blizzs classs of choice. not that id mind this but, they are to f'ing boring to play, i cant even play one! GG

I have a story, there was a 79 pally was dueling people outside Org and i went out there (as a arms warrior with deadly/hateful i knew i could easily take him)and i saw that he had only had a couple peices of gear on like chest, legs, and his boots so i asked him to put all his gear on and he didnt say anything just challenged me to a duel so i accepted and i ran back did the whole warrior thing charge, ms, hamstring etc... so he stunned did strike/storm and i was down 1/3 health so he bubbled and healed then used repentance and ran away out of range for any of my abilities, he was running for acouple of seconds then i caught up and charged he stunned before i could get ms off and did combo again then i got out and i used bladestorm to end it but he used nitro boots! and lay on hands and then came back in stun and he killed me!

ok dude, first off i started my pally thinking they are OP i dont exactly have an opinion right now becuz both sides have brought up VERY good points. (more the pro pally side :D) but bradley, for one you cant use that bubble if you have the flag in WSG. i mean i guess you can use it but u drop the flag automatically. and as far as just using a sheild all the time. just... no. we cant use another one for 2 minutes so dont QQ about that. plus u r assuming that we have ALL of our stuff ready to go. Hand of Freedom-20 MIN cool down. and.... im probably going to get my self ina lot of trouble here but lol... ur a warrior, hate to brake it to you but no matter wat u figth u will probably lose lol.